Content marketers are getting better at the job every year. North American benchmarks posted by MarketingProfs note that almost two-thirds of B2B and B2C marketers said they were more successful this year than last with their content marketing efforts. While that’s great news, it also means enterprises must work harder to keep up with the pack.
If your content marketing strategy is producing lackluster or down-trending results, here are some things you can do to revitalize performance.
1. Unlink Social Feed Postings and Go with Custom Content
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other social platforms let you link feeds; a post to Instagram can automatically post to Twitter and Facebook. Twitter posts can be fed directly to Facebook, and several other networks offer similar functionality. What’s convenient for the company isn’t always great for the content marketing strategy, though.
Automatic sharing between platforms gives your feed a robotic feel – and it looks sloppy and confusing to boot. Each social platform is optimized for certain types of content and plays best to different users. For better results, the content you post on each network needs to play to those strengths.
2. Rethink Your Press Release Strategy
Online press releases are still a wonderful tool for driving exposure and attention, particularly when you have a time-sensitive, newsworthy story. If you’re pushing out a press release every week just to get your name out there, though, you might want to rethink things.
Press releases are costly pieces of content to create and distribute, especially when compared to a blog or social post. If you’re just repackaging blog-appropriate post into press release format, you might not be getting the exposure necessary to justify the investment. Consider working with experienced press release writers to develop true press release ideas, or spend the money and effort boosting blog performance instead.
3. Spend Time Developing a Better UX
No matter how awesome your content is, if your site is confusing, slow or frustrating, it won’t perform. Spend some time testing user experience on a variety of platforms and devices to ensure everyone who follows a link to your site is able to use your site without issue. Employ categories and tags to organize content, so users can find the information they want within a few clicks.
4. Infuse Your Content Marketing with New Creative Blood
Sometimes content marketing strategies lag because your content managers and creators are exhausted or out of ideas for the topic at hand. Creativity is a renewable resource, but the well sometimes needs helps or time to replenish. By working with outsourced freelancers, you give in-house or regular contracted workers a break and infuse your content marketing strategy with new ideas and perspectives.
5. Locate and Replace Stale Content
Finally, if your strategy is sound, it might just be old content that is dragging the ship down. Run analytics on all of your pages and identify content that’s performing poorly. It’s especially important to rework product description and landing pages periodically to ensure they conform to keywords and content best practices that are currently trending. By working with a managed content team of crowdsourced writers and editors, you can overhaul an entire site quickly, boosting performance in the search engines.
